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What Did Western Modernity Make Us Forget About God? (Kevin Flatt) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

0:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm doctor James Spencer, and through calm, thoughtful theological discussions,
0:16
Speaker 1: Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the
0:18
Speaker 1: world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions
0:23
Speaker 1: that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now onto
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Speaker 1: today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone, welcome to this
0:32
Speaker 1: episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer. I'm joined
0:34
Speaker 1: by my co host, doctor Rashish Pharma, and today our guest,
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Speaker 1: our returning guest is doctor Kevin Flat He's an Associate
0:40
Speaker 1: Dean of Humanities and professor of History at Redeemer University,
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Speaker 1: and he is also the author of a book called Secularization,
0:48
Speaker 1: Social Order, and World History. And in that book he
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Speaker 1: talks an awful lot about sacred social order. We actually
0:55
Speaker 1: did our previous podcast on the book and on that concept,
0:59
Speaker 1: and so if you want to check that out, we'll
1:00
Speaker 1: put that link in the show notes. But today we're
1:03
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit more about sacred social
1:05
Speaker 1: order and how it might be of use in Christian formation,
1:12
Speaker 1: in helping people to have a framework and a deep
1:15
Speaker 1: understanding what the scriptures are actually teaching, and maybe even
1:18
Speaker 1: how it could be used in something closer to a
1:21
Speaker 1: catechism than maybe we have in churches today. So that said,
1:27
Speaker 1: welcome Kevin, thanks for coming back on the podcast.
1:30
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me back. James and Ashish looking forward
1:33
Speaker 2: to our conversation.
1:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think it's probably wise for us to
1:38
Speaker 1: start out. You know, when we say word it's like
1:40
Speaker 1: sacred social order, people may have a vague idea of
1:43
Speaker 1: what that is, but I think it's probably best if
1:45
Speaker 1: we define our terms a little bit, and so maybe
1:48
Speaker 1: we could start out just giving us a brief description
1:50
Speaker 1: of what sacred social order actually is in your mind.
1:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll start by contrasting it with the way we
1:58
Speaker 2: typically divide things up in the modern West. So, in
2:02
Speaker 2: modern Western culture, very often we divide life into two categories.
2:07
Speaker 2: There's religion and there's stuff that isn't religion, and so
2:11
Speaker 2: religion has to do with God or the gods, and
2:14
Speaker 2: then there's sort of everything else that really doesn't have
2:16
Speaker 2: to do with God or the gods. And this is
2:19
Speaker 2: a specifically Western way of looking at things that has
2:22
Speaker 2: become dominant in the last couple centuries in the West.
2:26
Speaker 2: But if you look at most civilizations and cultures in
2:31
Speaker 2: world history, you find they actually don't divide things up
2:34
Speaker 2: in that way, and instead many of them had this
2:39
Speaker 2: way of thinking that all of human life, including the
2:43
Speaker 2: way we relate to each other in society, across all
2:46
Speaker 2: the different domains of human activity, ought to conform to
2:52
Speaker 2: or harmonize with, something that's higher than us as human beings,
2:57
Speaker 2: the will of God, the cosmic order, something like that
3:01
Speaker 2: takes different forms in different cultures. But I use the
3:04
Speaker 2: term sacred social order to capture this idea of an
3:07
Speaker 2: alignment between human society and something that's higher than us
3:11
Speaker 2: to which we owe reverence and obedience. And that applies
3:15
Speaker 2: not just to a religious domain the way that we
3:18
Speaker 2: would normally talk about that, but it applies to lots
3:21
Speaker 2: of other things, to government, to the economy, to family life,
3:25
Speaker 2: all these different domains. So sacred social order is a
3:28
Speaker 2: concept for is kind of a shorthand for that, this
3:30
Speaker 2: idea that the social mirrors or needs to harmonize with
3:34
Speaker 2: the sacred, this thing that's higher than us as human beings.
3:39
Speaker 1: And you reference some of them with those different domains.
3:41
Speaker 1: I think in the book you talk a little bit
3:43
Speaker 1: about orderer of space and ordering of time, which, just
3:47
Speaker 1: by the way, are two of the categories that really
3:50
Speaker 1: got me thinking about how this could be used in
3:52
Speaker 1: churches to sort of cultivate a more catecheal sort of movement.
3:57
Speaker 1: But then you also have things like interactions with the
4:00
Speaker 1: deity government. Can you maybe walk us through some of
4:04
Speaker 1: those and help us understand what each one of them is,
4:07
Speaker 1: and maybe we just start with an easy one, like
4:09
Speaker 1: interactions with deity seems like a fairly simple one. What
4:13
Speaker 1: do you mean when we talk about interactions with deity?
4:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in pretty much every human culture that we
4:19
Speaker 2: know of, people have believed in beings that are more
4:24
Speaker 2: powerful than us, that are higher than us, Gods and spirits,
4:29
Speaker 2: God with a capital G and monotheistic cultures, and we
4:35
Speaker 2: have to approach them, we have to deal with them.
4:37
Speaker 2: And so every society has had ways of interacting with deities,
4:44
Speaker 2: with spiritual beings, and what that looks like varies a lot,
4:51
Speaker 2: but very often it includes some kind of system of
4:57
Speaker 2: sacrifice or offerings. It's not universal, but it's very common.
5:04
Speaker 2: So you see this in ancient Mesoamerican civilizations, which famously
5:09
Speaker 2: included an element of human blood letting even up to
5:12
Speaker 2: like full on human sacrifice as a way of establishing
5:15
Speaker 2: contact with the gods and sort of getting their attention,
5:19
Speaker 2: but lots of other forms as well. And it also
5:23
Speaker 2: includes typically some kind of prayer like communication one way
5:27
Speaker 2: or two way communication. Often it includes ways of trying
5:31
Speaker 2: to determine what the will of the gods is through
5:34
Speaker 2: the reading of signs or omens, or through oracles or prophets,
5:40
Speaker 2: and it includes a variety of other things that we
5:42
Speaker 2: might classify as kind of worship. So these are the
5:46
Speaker 2: sorts of things that happen particularly in temples and churches
5:50
Speaker 2: and those sorts of places, but can also happen in
5:52
Speaker 2: other places as well. So I see that as it's
5:55
Speaker 2: a particular domain of human activity that you see. It's
5:59
Speaker 2: not culture really specific. You see it across human cultures.
6:02
Speaker 2: That this is one domain of activity is relating to
6:05
Speaker 2: super human beings as I call them. And then you
6:09
Speaker 2: have other domains too, And there could be a long
6:12
Speaker 2: list of these, the ones that I talk about in
6:14
Speaker 2: the book. In addition to interaction with superhuman beings. Is
6:21
Speaker 2: the category of government, which includes what in modern times
6:24
Speaker 2: you would call politics. It includes the category of kind
6:30
Speaker 2: of gender, family, sexuality, marriage, that's kind of a connected
6:35
Speaker 2: group of things. It includes the category of cultural transmission
6:40
Speaker 2: from one generation to another generation, which includes formal education
6:44
Speaker 2: but also more informal ways of transmitting culture. So those
6:48
Speaker 2: are kind of four domains. There's other ones you could
6:50
Speaker 2: include agriculture, economics, what we call the arts. And then
6:55
Speaker 2: there's these three kind of general frameworks that I talked
7:02
Speaker 2: about in the book as well, and so you talked
7:03
Speaker 2: to you mentioned the ordering of space and the ordering
7:06
Speaker 2: of time, so that's.
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Speaker 1: Two of them.
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Speaker 2: The third one is what I call principles of right action,
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Speaker 2: So it's kind of the overall framework of what's the
7:16
Speaker 2: right way to act as a human being. And so
7:20
Speaker 2: the category of law is part of this, especially if
7:23
Speaker 2: we define law very broadly. The notion of law is
7:29
Speaker 2: another one of these general frameworks. So these are things, again,
7:33
Speaker 2: they're cross cultural categories. All of the major civilizations that
7:36
Speaker 2: a look at in the book had some conception of
7:39
Speaker 2: law or principles of right action. They had a way
7:41
Speaker 2: of ordering space and time, and people engaged in the
7:45
Speaker 2: domains of activity that we call worship and government, and
7:49
Speaker 2: sexuality and cultural transmission or education. And again there could
7:54
Speaker 2: be other examples.
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Speaker 1: And one of the key things, like when we talk
8:00
Speaker 1: about government and politics and those kind of things, it
8:03
Speaker 1: just worth clearing up that underneath a sacred social order
8:07
Speaker 1: sort of a framework, or we're looking at government, the
8:11
Speaker 1: governing officials are generally viewed in some way, shape or
8:15
Speaker 1: form as agents or manifestations of the gods. Is that
8:20
Speaker 1: a fair You probably nuanced at a bit.
8:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would nuanced a bit, but I often that
8:26
Speaker 2: is the case.
8:27
Speaker 1: Right.
8:27
Speaker 2: So in a lot of historical sacred social orders, the
8:35
Speaker 2: king is himself considered to be divine or to be
8:40
Speaker 2: descended from the gods, either in a literal sense in
8:44
Speaker 2: the case of the Imperial Family of Japan, where traditionally
8:48
Speaker 2: they claim to be descended from the Sun goddess, or
8:53
Speaker 2: in a somewhat more abstract sense. So the Emperor of
8:56
Speaker 2: China historically was considered to be the son of Heaven.
9:00
Speaker 2: That has more the idea that he is a servant
9:02
Speaker 2: of Heaven, being kind of an impersonal stand in for God,
9:06
Speaker 2: the idea that there's this overarching power over the universe
9:09
Speaker 2: that has moral authority over human beings, and the emperor
9:13
Speaker 2: is kind of the representative of that and the servant
9:16
Speaker 2: of that. But there can be different versions as well.
9:20
Speaker 2: So in Buddhism, the gods, they believe that there's gods,
9:24
Speaker 2: but they don't believe they're really important in the same
9:26
Speaker 2: way that they are in a lot of other traditions.
9:30
Speaker 2: But there too, they have a concept of what they
9:33
Speaker 2: call the righteous universal ruler, the person who follows dharma,
9:38
Speaker 2: which is this great Indian word for justice and righteousness
9:42
Speaker 2: and duty. So there's the righteous universal ruler who isn't
9:48
Speaker 2: a god, but he is distinguished by the fact that
9:51
Speaker 2: he puts into practice the principles of dharma. And so
9:55
Speaker 2: in early Buddhist writings, one of the early emperors of India,
10:01
Speaker 2: again named Ashoka, is held up as kind of an
10:04
Speaker 2: example of this sort of righteous universal ruler. So the
10:09
Speaker 2: ruler isn't divine. But what makes government a part of
10:14
Speaker 2: sacred social order in that kind of a system is
10:16
Speaker 2: still the idea that government and the purposes of government
10:22
Speaker 2: is not something that we just kind of come up
10:24
Speaker 2: with arbitrarily as human beings. It's not about us and
10:28
Speaker 2: about serving us primarily or entirely. But it's about putting
10:32
Speaker 2: into practice some kind of higher cosmic principle of justice
10:36
Speaker 2: or righteousness, which isn't something we invent as human beings.
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Speaker 2: Our job is to learn what it is and to
10:43
Speaker 2: follow it, rather than to come up with it ourselves.
10:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just word saying and then she shall let
10:50
Speaker 1: you jump in here. But as I was reading through
10:53
Speaker 1: Genesis again the other day, ran across Genesis twenty six
10:56
Speaker 1: y five, and this is where Abraham is described as
10:59
Speaker 1: one who followed all of God's commands, statutes, and laws.
11:03
Speaker 1: And you read that text now through this grid and lens,
11:07
Speaker 1: and what you really understand is that God's commands, laws
11:11
Speaker 1: and statutes, Yes they probably haven't been given yet, right,
11:14
Speaker 1: but they're reflective of the divine order that the people
11:21
Speaker 1: are to be reflecting. And so when Abraham's described like this,
11:24
Speaker 1: what he's really being described as is this sort of
11:28
Speaker 1: moral authority or theological authority, this embodiment of the crucial
11:33
Speaker 1: aspects of what it means to be in Israelite that
11:38
Speaker 1: later Israelite generation should emulate in some degree. And so
11:42
Speaker 1: I think that's an interesting sort of spot where I
11:45
Speaker 1: see that showing up aside from a lot of the
11:47
Speaker 1: kingship passages even in the Old Testament.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a really good opportunity to mention
11:54
Speaker 2: that this idea of sacred social order in the book,
11:57
Speaker 2: I derived the idea simply from looking at Indian civilization,
12:01
Speaker 2: Chinese civilization, as Lam civilization, Mesoamerican civilization. But it is
12:07
Speaker 2: actually a deeply biblical concept. We see it in the
12:12
Speaker 2: Old Testament and the New Testament. And so God's law
12:16
Speaker 2: in the kind of the eternal universal sense, right, Abraham
12:20
Speaker 2: is following God's law. And then we have the Mosaic
12:24
Speaker 2: law that's given to the people of Israel, which is
12:28
Speaker 2: kind of a an instantiation of that eternal universal law
12:34
Speaker 2: for a particular people in a particular setting. But what
12:38
Speaker 2: is that law about. It's not just about or even
12:42
Speaker 2: mainly about what we would consider religious matters, right, right.
12:46
Speaker 2: It covers excuse me, it covers kingship, It covers the economy,
12:50
Speaker 2: it covers the treatment of the poor, it covers how
12:53
Speaker 2: do you govern handling things like communicable diseases. Right, So
12:58
Speaker 2: it's it's a comparing blueprint for sort of here's what
13:03
Speaker 2: a just a righteous society that conforms to God's law.
13:07
Speaker 2: Here's what it would look like.
13:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, very good, super helpful.
13:13
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have a couple of questions that I think
13:15
Speaker 3: will lead us into the sort of catechisis questions that
13:21
Speaker 3: we're leading towards. Answer them in any order you want
13:25
Speaker 3: or however you want. But the two that I think
13:28
Speaker 3: are somewhat related are You've got this dynamic in say
13:32
Speaker 3: the American setting, right where we hold these truths to
13:36
Speaker 3: be self evident that all men are created equal, where
13:39
Speaker 3: there seems to be a movement at that point, and
13:43
Speaker 3: yet at the same time it's yet people are endowed
13:47
Speaker 3: by certain with certain inalienable rights by a creator. Right
13:51
Speaker 3: where there's not a complete disconnect in the formation of
13:56
Speaker 3: law in this country as opposed to the way that
13:58
Speaker 3: you're describing them kind of pan globally across many cultures
14:02
Speaker 3: in slightly different ways where there's more direct connection. Maybe
14:06
Speaker 3: the best way to describe it is you have initially
14:09
Speaker 3: more of a deist concept in this country, and then
14:14
Speaker 3: it seems to move into over the course of time,
14:17
Speaker 3: a removal of even that deist element, right, where it's
14:21
Speaker 3: just the ability to perceive, maybe in this content way
14:25
Speaker 3: a universal ethic that we can just reason to hardstop.
14:30
Speaker 3: Where they come from, how they're tied to anything beyond
14:32
Speaker 3: what we know is irrelevant. So that's part one, Part two.
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Speaker 3: On the popular level, I can imagine you've encountered a
14:44
Speaker 3: lot of this as well, even north of the border,
14:48
Speaker 3: whether it be media, whether it be people, even Christians
14:51
Speaker 3: that I talk to, love to talk increasingly about, Well,
14:54
Speaker 3: the universe has lined things up for us. The universe
14:58
Speaker 3: is that keyword. And I was noting that you use
15:01
Speaker 3: the term universe and the way that you're describing the
15:03
Speaker 3: Buddhist concept, and maybe there's some connection there. What do
15:07
Speaker 3: you see as going on? I guess it's the short
15:09
Speaker 3: version to join those two things. Right, You've got this
15:13
Speaker 3: larger historical reality that what you're describing is also true
15:17
Speaker 3: of early and medieval Christianity. Yeah, And yet we've got
15:23
Speaker 3: this movement in what we think of as the modern
15:25
Speaker 3: West and too, perhaps initially the deist mode and then
15:29
Speaker 3: eventually just slopping off the necessity of the deist part
15:32
Speaker 3: of it as well. And yet popularly we're more than
15:36
Speaker 3: happy to keep talking about the universe lining things up,
15:38
Speaker 3: the universe helping me out and so on and so forth.
15:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, so these are very perceptive questions, and there's a
15:47
Speaker 2: few things going on here. So one thing that I'll
15:51
Speaker 2: note is it's one thing for us to talk in
15:55
Speaker 2: terms of these kind of ideal types of like a
16:00
Speaker 2: sacred social order, whether it's an Islamic one or an
16:03
Speaker 2: early modern Christian one or a Buddhist one. You know,
16:06
Speaker 2: there's kind of an ideal form of that, and then
16:09
Speaker 2: there's what you actually have existing in any given society
16:11
Speaker 2: at a given time. And the contrary, I think, to
16:15
Speaker 2: what we often assume pluralism, in the sense of having
16:20
Speaker 2: people sharing the same society who don't all share the
16:24
Speaker 2: same fundamental worldview and belief even about sacred social order,
16:30
Speaker 2: that's actually not a new phenomenon. There's lots of examples
16:33
Speaker 2: of that historically, particularly in places like India and China,
16:37
Speaker 2: where almost through the whole recorded history that we have
16:40
Speaker 2: of those places, there are different accounts on offer. And
16:44
Speaker 2: that's also true in our own modern history.
16:46
Speaker 1: Right.
16:46
Speaker 2: So if you look at the American Founding, and I
16:51
Speaker 2: am not an expert as a historian on the American Founding,
16:54
Speaker 2: but the works of kind of the really smart people
16:58
Speaker 2: that I've read who have developed an expertise in this
17:02
Speaker 2: that I find convincing. You know, they argue there's kind
17:04
Speaker 2: of overlapping traditions that are represented among the Founders that
17:09
Speaker 2: you see in the Founding itself, and you have kind
17:12
Speaker 2: of a strand that you the Enlightenment kind of strand
17:20
Speaker 2: which is more deistic and believes there's a creator, but
17:26
Speaker 2: you know, it is suspicious of anything that looks like
17:29
Speaker 2: revealed religion and wants to kind of just use pure
17:31
Speaker 2: reason to derive here's what the political orders should look like.
17:36
Speaker 2: So there's that strand that's represented. But then you also
17:40
Speaker 2: have these other traditions that are really influential. You have
17:43
Speaker 2: kind of the particularly the English political tradition, which has
17:48
Speaker 2: a lot of Reformed influences through Puritanism and other ways,
17:53
Speaker 2: which has developed a kind of worked out Christian conception
17:58
Speaker 2: of the responsibilities of rulers and the limitations of the
18:01
Speaker 2: powers of the magistrate and of the king, and that's
18:04
Speaker 2: been developing for centuries out of like a much more
18:07
Speaker 2: explicitly Christian framework. You have the very old kind of
18:14
Speaker 2: civic republican virtue tradition, not republican in the modern sense,
18:18
Speaker 2: but coming out of early modern and medieval republics, places
18:22
Speaker 2: like Venice, which is partly looking to the classical pagan
18:25
Speaker 2: tradition but then also has put it very much in
18:27
Speaker 2: a Christian framework too. So what you get with something
18:31
Speaker 2: like the Declaration of Independence, as I understand it, is
18:35
Speaker 2: not kind of in pure form any one of these things,
18:40
Speaker 2: But it's sort of like an overlapping consensus of a
18:43
Speaker 2: few different strands that are coming together, some of which
18:45
Speaker 2: are very explicitly Christian and they're thinking, others of which,
18:49
Speaker 2: in the Enlightenment mode have kind of distanced themselves from that.
18:53
Speaker 2: And so I think, and I don't at all mean
18:57
Speaker 2: this in a negative way, there's a kind of inherent
19:00
Speaker 2: ambiguity in the American founding where you can read the
19:04
Speaker 2: American constitutional order, which I'll say as a Canadian who
19:09
Speaker 2: who is very fond of the British tradition, and I
19:13
Speaker 2: am a monarchist and I love our constitutional monarchy, but
19:17
Speaker 2: I will say, you know, the American constitutional order is
19:21
Speaker 2: absolutely brilliant. We have very few political orders in the
19:26
Speaker 2: modern world that were sort of created and drawn up
19:29
Speaker 2: at a particular time, Republican political orders that have stood
19:35
Speaker 2: the test of time. And although we're going through a
19:38
Speaker 2: turnailent period right now for the American political order. As
19:42
Speaker 2: you are well aware, it's been remarkably robust through a
19:46
Speaker 2: lot of things, so I have enormous respect for that
19:48
Speaker 2: as a Canadian. But there's this ambiguity. You can read
19:53
Speaker 2: it very easily within a Christian mode of thinking, particularly
19:59
Speaker 2: a protest and particularly in evangelical motive thinking, harmonizes really well.
20:03
Speaker 2: But of course Catholics have found ways of doing this also,
20:08
Speaker 2: But you can also read it in a much more
20:11
Speaker 2: deistic and even atheistic way. It's a little bit harder
20:15
Speaker 2: to read it completely atheistically given the reference to the Creator,
20:20
Speaker 2: but of course people can take it that way and
20:22
Speaker 2: then come up with sort of purely humanistic grounds for
20:26
Speaker 2: thinking that this is a good political order as well.
20:28
Speaker 2: So there's this ambiguity I think that's kind of in
20:33
Speaker 2: the heart of the American political establishment. And of course,
20:36
Speaker 2: in different eras of American history, people have read it
20:40
Speaker 2: in a more Christian way, most commonly through most of
20:43
Speaker 2: American history, but in the last three generations or so,
20:49
Speaker 2: it's become more common to read it in a not
20:55
Speaker 2: explicitly Christian way, and often in an implicitly deistic or
21:00
Speaker 2: atheistic way.
21:04
Speaker 1: There's an interesting phenomenon that happened early in American history.
21:09
Speaker 1: The federal government was relatively weak at the beginning, and
21:14
Speaker 1: so even though it was you know, saying, hey, we're
21:16
Speaker 1: going to have this separation of church and state in
21:18
Speaker 1: the sense that where you know, the government is not
21:21
Speaker 1: going to establish religion, the states actually had state established churches,
21:28
Speaker 1: and so they also had religious tests for governmental service
21:33
Speaker 1: those kind of things, And I believe it was in Pennsylvania,
21:35
Speaker 1: but I'd have to go back and double check that.
21:37
Speaker 1: But they used to have a very explicit reference to
21:41
Speaker 1: if you wanted to serve as a political agent in
21:45
Speaker 1: the government, you needed to believe in the Old and
21:48
Speaker 1: New Testaments as inspired texts. And there was pushback from
21:52
Speaker 1: a local synagogue, and they eventually amended that to something
21:59
Speaker 1: like you need to believe that there is a God
22:02
Speaker 1: and that that what you do on earth will garner
22:05
Speaker 1: you rewards or punishment in the afterlife. There was this
22:09
Speaker 1: sense in which they could broaden that out and still
22:12
Speaker 1: hold on to this kernel of sacred social order that
22:15
Speaker 1: said what we do in this life matters, and that
22:19
Speaker 1: mattering should be a strong guide for how people interact
22:25
Speaker 1: with one another here and now. And so even within
22:28
Speaker 1: this ambiguity, which I agree with you on, that they
22:31
Speaker 1: were finding these common ways to relink the social order
22:37
Speaker 1: and the sacred order. What I think people are frustrated
22:42
Speaker 1: about today are more frustrated about it, seems like, and
22:45
Speaker 1: we see this sort of coming out in things like
22:48
Speaker 1: Christian nationalism or what have you. I think they're concerned
22:52
Speaker 1: that that linkage is gone, that there is no real
22:57
Speaker 1: implication for what we do here, and that the you know,
23:00
Speaker 1: the one who dies with the most toys is the
23:03
Speaker 1: winner kind of idea. And so I'm wondering if you
23:07
Speaker 1: see that as a shift towards secularization, you know, a
23:12
Speaker 1: more pure form of secularization, as you describe it in
23:15
Speaker 1: the book, And maybe it'd be worth sort of teasing
23:17
Speaker 1: that out. But to me, there is this sort of
23:20
Speaker 1: iteration in American history where you start to see a
23:23
Speaker 1: broadening of the sacred social order away from specifically Christian
23:27
Speaker 1: things out into things that would preserve some semblance of
23:31
Speaker 1: a social order. And now we're sort of back to
23:33
Speaker 1: this point where I'm kind of with Ashish, I don't
23:36
Speaker 1: know that it really means anything to most of the people.
23:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, based on my understanding of American history,
23:44
Speaker 2: that sounds exactly right to me. You kind of have Initially,
23:52
Speaker 2: there's just sort of this background assumption, well, basically everybody
23:56
Speaker 2: here is some kind of Protestant, right, So at a
24:00
Speaker 2: federal level, we're not going to establish a church. At
24:03
Speaker 2: the state level, some states are going to have established churches,
24:06
Speaker 2: and there's going to be a high degree of toleration
24:09
Speaker 2: of other kinds at this point Protestantism, right, maybe in
24:14
Speaker 2: a few cases Catholicism and Judaism as well, But the
24:18
Speaker 2: basic assumption is, you know, this is an overwhelmingly Protestant environment,
24:23
Speaker 2: and so really what we're talking about is how do
24:24
Speaker 2: we live together as different kinds of Protestants. And that
24:29
Speaker 2: becomes more complex over time as you end up with
24:34
Speaker 2: larger Catholic populations, as you move into the nineteenth century
24:38
Speaker 2: of more immigration from Catholic parts of Europe. You have,
24:42
Speaker 2: of course a Jewish presence which goes back very far,
24:47
Speaker 2: which is important as well, and in relatively recent times
24:53
Speaker 2: you have also the growth of still relatively small, but
24:57
Speaker 2: populations of people following other traditions entirely. And so there
25:05
Speaker 2: is I think a shift over time in the American
25:09
Speaker 2: political consciousness from what we have here is basically a
25:13
Speaker 2: Protestant consensus that can make room for other groups as well,
25:18
Speaker 2: but it's basically a Protestant consensus. And public institutions, including
25:23
Speaker 2: public schools, including state universities, for example, and this is
25:27
Speaker 2: you can document this historically, they're just going to assume
25:31
Speaker 2: a Protestant, generically Protestant ethos, even like I mean, even
25:36
Speaker 2: state universities in the late nineteenth century in the US
25:39
Speaker 2: had mandatory chapel service attendance at kind of generically Protestant
25:43
Speaker 2: or even denominationally more kind of leaning one way or
25:46
Speaker 2: the other chapel services, because the assumption was most of
25:49
Speaker 2: us are coming from that, and we can have carvoutes
25:51
Speaker 2: and exceptions and toleration of other groups, but the majority
25:55
Speaker 2: consensus is this, and then you can broaden that out
25:58
Speaker 2: to include Catholics. But there's a shift. And my understanding
26:04
Speaker 2: is in terms of you know, American constitutional thinking, there's
26:08
Speaker 2: a shift in the twentieth century, through a number of
26:12
Speaker 2: Supreme Court cases, towards a more stringent idea of the
26:18
Speaker 2: separation of church and State as requiring the exclusion of
26:27
Speaker 2: any kind of religious perspective, So you get, you know,
26:32
Speaker 2: the removal of prayer from public schools, you get the
26:35
Speaker 2: controversy around should we have the Ten Commandments up in
26:38
Speaker 2: the courthouses and those sorts of things. And they can
26:42
Speaker 2: look back to things that some of the founders said,
26:44
Speaker 2: like there's things that Jefferson said, for example, that can
26:46
Speaker 2: provide a basis for that, but really that's not the
26:48
Speaker 2: consensus in American constitutional thinking until the twentieth century. There's
26:53
Speaker 2: a transition there and this there's parallel developments in other
26:59
Speaker 2: West Extern countries, but they play out differently. Your listeners
27:06
Speaker 2: are probably mostly not going to know a ton about
27:08
Speaker 2: the Canadian experience, and I'm not going to go too
27:10
Speaker 2: deep down that rabbit hole. But our experience is different,
27:13
Speaker 2: partly because when the British conquered what is now Canada
27:18
Speaker 2: in the seventeen sixties, seventeen fifties and seventeen sixties, there
27:22
Speaker 2: was already a large French speaking Catholic population in what
27:26
Speaker 2: is now the province of Quebec. What happened in New
27:28
Speaker 2: France up until that point, and they made a very
27:32
Speaker 2: significant decision, We're going to create a constitutional order here
27:37
Speaker 2: within the British Empire in Canada that is going to
27:41
Speaker 2: allow French speaking Catholics to preserve their religion and their
27:46
Speaker 2: language under the umbrella of British institutions. And so from
27:50
Speaker 2: the beginning, or very early in Canadian history, you have
27:54
Speaker 2: an attempt to say, Okay, we have Catholics, and we
27:57
Speaker 2: have Protestants, mainly French speaking Catholics the English speaking Protestants,
28:01
Speaker 2: and we have to build a political order that accommodates
28:05
Speaker 2: both of those, but where the kind of overarching dominant
28:11
Speaker 2: viewpoint is Christian and basically defaults to Protestantism as the
28:16
Speaker 2: dominant view but with space for Catholicism as well. And
28:20
Speaker 2: in Canada that actually is never really officially repudiated, but
28:28
Speaker 2: in practice it kind of breaks down surprisingly recently, even
28:33
Speaker 2: sort of like nineteen sixties to nineteen nineties is kind
28:37
Speaker 2: of when a lot of the legal changes came that
28:40
Speaker 2: demolished that. So even myself, you know, I was born
28:43
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty went to a public school here in Canada,
28:49
Speaker 2: and when I was in grade two, so this is
28:51
Speaker 2: kind of mid to late eighties, we still said the
28:54
Speaker 2: Lord's Prayer every morning in my public school. It was
28:58
Speaker 2: the last year. It was legal to do that because
29:00
Speaker 2: there was a core case, and I think it was
29:02
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight or so where they said, well, if
29:04
Speaker 2: you're gonna do the Lord's pray, you have to give
29:06
Speaker 2: equal time to all prayers of all faith traditions. And
29:10
Speaker 2: it was already very unusual that that teacher did that
29:13
Speaker 2: in the public school at that time, but it was
29:15
Speaker 2: still kind of legally that was still the thing you
29:18
Speaker 2: could do. So there's a similar transition that happens over
29:23
Speaker 2: a different period of time. And there's no even today
29:27
Speaker 2: in the Canadian political order, there is no constitutional basis
29:31
Speaker 2: really for an absolute separation of church and state in Canada,
29:35
Speaker 2: even though we don't have an established church. Sure, the
29:38
Speaker 2: head of state of Canada is also the head of
29:41
Speaker 2: the Church of England. All over our coins say that
29:44
Speaker 2: he rules by the grace of God, you know. So
29:47
Speaker 2: if you pick up a Canadian coin that's been minted
29:49
Speaker 2: since His Majesty King Charles became king, it says d G.
29:54
Speaker 2: Rex So de gratia Rex King by the grace of God.
30:00
Speaker 2: When it was Queen Elizabeth, it was DG. Regina or
30:03
Speaker 2: Regina right Queen by the grace of God.
30:06
Speaker 1: So there's a.
30:07
Speaker 2: Sense in which even now in a very secular country
30:10
Speaker 2: like Canada, our political order is not fully secularized. There's
30:14
Speaker 2: still these vestigial Christian things. So again reality is more
30:18
Speaker 2: very interesting.
30:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, really interesting. Here's what you think.
30:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, A former colleague of mine introduced to me this
30:32
Speaker 3: notion that in the American setting, because you don't have
30:38
Speaker 3: a centralized established church, right even when in the period
30:42
Speaker 3: you're talking about, right where different different colonies that became
30:45
Speaker 3: states might have had their own distinctiveness, right, for instance,
30:49
Speaker 3: Pennsylvania as the Quaker state. Because of that ambiguity, that
30:55
Speaker 3: leads you into what the idea of the United States is.
31:00
Speaker 3: And no establishment of a particular church, the unifying thrust functionally,
31:07
Speaker 3: maybe intentionally, but probably functionally at the time, makes the
31:10
Speaker 3: United States itself have to occupy that position of the
31:16
Speaker 3: religious identity, so that to be an American, to buy
31:22
Speaker 3: into the idea of being an American, is to buy
31:26
Speaker 3: into our religious identity, right, and so within that would
31:30
Speaker 3: be the sorts of things we talk about when we
31:32
Speaker 3: speak of silverl religion. You see this. I think of
31:36
Speaker 3: a good friend of mine who went to Mayo for
31:38
Speaker 3: med school, and he talked about the eeriness of stepping
31:42
Speaker 3: foot on campus that as much as he loved the experience,
31:44
Speaker 3: it felt very much like a religious experience where you've
31:47
Speaker 3: got the center of campus. Is it very much feels
31:52
Speaker 3: like the cult statue to the Brothers Mayo, the way
31:55
Speaker 3: in which everyone walks around in their priestly white robes,
31:58
Speaker 3: right the medical guard and right down to the very
32:03
Speaker 3: center of it. But you can think about that in
32:04
Speaker 3: terms of really that that is very much still the
32:08
Speaker 3: experience I had. I went to the University of Iowa,
32:11
Speaker 3: and you've got the fight song, and you've got the
32:13
Speaker 3: religious sort of gathering, and you've got this sort of
32:15
Speaker 3: sense of school pride that's built. It's supposed to override
32:19
Speaker 3: everything else. Right, So you can also be a Quaker,
32:22
Speaker 3: you can also be a Baptist, but that takes second
32:25
Speaker 3: stage to the Cult of America. I think about that
32:28
Speaker 3: in conjunction with I think it was Martha Nusbaum, if
32:31
Speaker 3: I'm remembering correctly, wrote a book where she's describing how
32:35
Speaker 3: the growth of India as a democracy post partition is
32:41
Speaker 3: deliberately trying to draw upon that. Right, So you've got
32:44
Speaker 3: the music built into it. The Gore who creates the
32:47
Speaker 3: Indian national anthem is trying to make that corner reality.
32:51
Speaker 3: The siding with Mahatma Gandhi over Bosa is supposed to
32:56
Speaker 3: be an attempt to create a cult of India, so
33:01
Speaker 3: to speak, where you can be Muslim, you can be
33:03
Speaker 3: Hindu and Hindus itself abroad idea, as we talked about
33:06
Speaker 3: last time. Now in India you've got the Nehendra Modas
33:11
Speaker 3: who are very much leaning heavily into a repealing of
33:14
Speaker 3: that and to giving you a distinctly religious identity which
33:17
Speaker 3: in some ways fits more the historical model in Canada,
33:21
Speaker 3: as you describe whether or not it's very religious, and
33:24
Speaker 3: arguably in some ways it's very irreligious. Still at its
33:27
Speaker 3: core is this idea of a state church, at least
33:31
Speaker 3: functionally right through the Anglican the Bishop of Canterbury being
33:37
Speaker 3: the head of the church right and that being connected
33:42
Speaker 3: to King Charles as the king. It's an Anglican identity,
33:45
Speaker 3: and the US you could not do that, right, even
33:48
Speaker 3: if people were to agree, okay, Christian from the onset,
33:52
Speaker 3: you can't do that. Now, where I'm going with this
33:56
Speaker 3: is that I'm leaning towards my colleague. I think he's
34:00
Speaker 3: onto something, and I'm gathering by your nodding that you
34:04
Speaker 3: think so as well. But I'm wondering if that inherently
34:08
Speaker 3: requires sort of what we might think of as a
34:11
Speaker 3: secular catechism in order to make people into this religious
34:17
Speaker 3: identity of America first.
34:19
Speaker 1: Does that make sense? Yeah?
34:21
Speaker 2: No, I think this is very insightful, and so one
34:24
Speaker 2: of the realities that it's pointing to here. So I
34:26
Speaker 2: distinguish between sacred social orders and what I call the
34:30
Speaker 2: secular order. And I'm using here the word sacred as
34:34
Speaker 2: a shorthand for this idea. There's something higher than us
34:36
Speaker 2: as human beings, like kind of a cosmic order, a
34:38
Speaker 2: divine order. But there's also an equally valid sense in
34:44
Speaker 2: which you can talk about there being sacred secular values.
34:51
Speaker 2: And so what I mean by is I have a
34:55
Speaker 2: couple of colleagues here at at the University of Waterloo
34:59
Speaker 2: here here in Ontario who've recently authored a paper and
35:03
Speaker 2: they talk about the secular sacred canopy and what they're
35:08
Speaker 2: that it's a nuanced argument, but part of what they're
35:11
Speaker 2: getting at is the idea that also in a secular society,
35:15
Speaker 2: there still has to be some kind of shared framework,
35:18
Speaker 2: what is reality and what are the sacred values, what's
35:23
Speaker 2: important and what can we kind of unite around. And
35:28
Speaker 2: in the case of these more secular societies, if you
35:33
Speaker 2: don't have an agreed upon sacred social order, it doesn't
35:38
Speaker 2: mean that sacred values in this other sense disappear. You
35:43
Speaker 2: still have sacred values, you still have symbols that are sacred,
35:46
Speaker 2: you still have rituals that are sacred, except now those
35:50
Speaker 2: things have to be located somehow in the human plane.
35:57
Speaker 2: So one form that that can take is national identity.
36:01
Speaker 2: So you know, that can be a kind of American
36:05
Speaker 2: civil religion where what becomes sacred are the symbols of America,
36:11
Speaker 2: of the flag, of the American constitutional order, of the
36:16
Speaker 2: Bill of Rights, of the office of the President. That
36:19
Speaker 2: kind of accumulates a certain kind of symbolism and gravitas
36:24
Speaker 2: around it, that sort of stands in for the place
36:28
Speaker 2: of a divinely ordained monarch right. And those things I
36:35
Speaker 2: think are an indication that, you know, really there can't
36:39
Speaker 2: be a vacuum. There might be a transitional period where
36:45
Speaker 2: we're not sure what the sacred things are. But if
36:48
Speaker 2: you get rid of if you do away with a
36:51
Speaker 2: sacred social order as we do in secularization. My argument
36:54
Speaker 2: is that secularization is a revue social order. It's not
36:59
Speaker 2: like that space stays empty, you replace it with something,
37:03
Speaker 2: and that nationalism. It can be extreme forms of nationalism
37:06
Speaker 2: like we see in fascists and Nazi movements in the
37:09
Speaker 2: middle of the twentieth century. It can be a worldview
37:14
Speaker 2: and a framework like communism which absoluteizes egalitarianism and anti
37:21
Speaker 2: oppression and tries to build a whole society around those
37:25
Speaker 2: things as sacred values and comes up with its own
37:27
Speaker 2: rituals and ceremonies and sumpost to go with that. I
37:30
Speaker 2: would even say, and here we're starting to tread into,
37:33
Speaker 2: you know, controversial waters. I don't know how it is
37:38
Speaker 2: in the US, but right now, it's the month of
37:39
Speaker 2: June in Canada. It's obviously the month of June in
37:43
Speaker 2: the US as well, but one of the things that
37:46
Speaker 2: we see in the month of June in Canada all
37:49
Speaker 2: of the schools, all of the publicly funded schools in
37:53
Speaker 2: Ontario are flying a flag in addition to the Canadian flag.
37:58
Speaker 2: And I think we all know what flag that is
38:00
Speaker 2: sacred flag in a lot of ways, right it can't
38:03
Speaker 2: be challenged, it can't be questioned. It's a sacred value,
38:06
Speaker 2: and it symbolizes something that has come to be sacred
38:11
Speaker 2: in our society, which in this case is gender identity
38:19
Speaker 2: and sexual orientation as expressions of what you might call
38:25
Speaker 2: our core sacred value of the individual, individual autonomy, individual authenticity,
38:32
Speaker 2: individual self expression. Right, these things are sacred or seen
38:35
Speaker 2: as sacred because they're manifestations of these core sacred values
38:40
Speaker 2: and fundamentally human like. Right, So the human being, the
38:43
Speaker 2: human individual becomes the sacred thing. So that's a bit
38:46
Speaker 2: different from nationalism, where there's a human community becomes the
38:49
Speaker 2: sacred thing and they coexist obviously in this kind of overlapping,
38:53
Speaker 2: messy existence for us as Christians, I think, and this
38:58
Speaker 2: might start to turn us into some of the pieces
39:01
Speaker 2: question for us as Christians, I think we have to
39:05
Speaker 2: be aware of what are these alternative sacred values in
39:09
Speaker 2: our society, which in our society are going to be humanistic,
39:13
Speaker 2: secular versions of the sacred And that might be the religion,
39:18
Speaker 2: so to speak, of American nationalism, it might be the
39:23
Speaker 2: quote unquote value system that's represented by a rainbow flag. Right,
39:30
Speaker 2: And so an important question for us is might we
39:36
Speaker 2: inadvertently kind of subordinate the teachings of Christianity and a
39:46
Speaker 2: Biblical scale of values to some other set of sacred
39:51
Speaker 2: values that are really prominent in our society. Which again, yeah,
39:55
Speaker 2: and I'm here, I'm not picking on left or right.
39:57
Speaker 2: You see, right, on the right, the temptation maybe is
40:01
Speaker 2: the religion of American nationalism. On the left, the temptation
40:04
Speaker 2: is maybe, you know, I don't know if religion is
40:06
Speaker 2: the right term, but this other set of sacred values
40:08
Speaker 2: around sexuality and gender as expressing kind of the sacredness
40:13
Speaker 2: of the individual. So that's I think a beginning of
40:17
Speaker 2: sort of a catechetical way of thinking about that.
40:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just to circle back to what Ashesh
40:24
Speaker 1: was saying, I tend to agree. I mean, my work
40:26
Speaker 1: on American civil religion. I don't know that I came
40:28
Speaker 1: to the exact same conclusion as it was Michael McDuffie
40:31
Speaker 1: I assume you were talking about. So I'm not sure
40:34
Speaker 1: I came to the exact same conclusion as Michael McDuffie,
40:36
Speaker 1: but very close you start to see that the God
40:40
Speaker 1: language is co opted and it no longer has the
40:44
Speaker 1: same conceptual background as we would want it to have
40:47
Speaker 1: as Christians. So whenever we say the way I usually
40:51
Speaker 1: explain it to people, when we're talking about Christian nation,
40:54
Speaker 1: we're not saying the same thing is when we're saying
40:56
Speaker 1: Christian worship or Christian doctrine. Those are two different of Christian.
41:00
Speaker 1: And so the concept behind the word actually does matter.
41:05
Speaker 1: And so when we're saying under God, we're probably not
41:08
Speaker 1: saying under the Triune God, right, We're probably talking about
41:14
Speaker 1: under the transcendent idea or being whichever one you'd prefer.
41:19
Speaker 1: And so you have this sort of slippage in the language.
41:23
Speaker 1: And I think that this does get at the catechisis question,
41:25
Speaker 1: because what I see in your work and in this
41:29
Speaker 1: notion of sacred social order, I actually saw first in
41:32
Speaker 1: that ordering of time. And so I've done a lot
41:35
Speaker 1: of work in technology, and one of the things that
41:38
Speaker 1: has come out and surface from that is they are
41:41
Speaker 1: these inconspicuous patterns that technology tends to ingrain within our lives,
41:47
Speaker 1: and we don't notice that we're really giving them up
41:49
Speaker 1: until it's way gone. This relates very strongly both to
41:55
Speaker 1: an ordering of space and an ordering of time. With
41:57
Speaker 1: regard to technology, are space has been sort of exploded, right,
42:04
Speaker 1: because we can do travel so easily because we can
42:07
Speaker 1: transcend space and the way we're doing now, it's not
42:09
Speaker 1: all bad, but we can you know, we don't have
42:12
Speaker 1: to travel to Canada or you don't have to travel here,
42:14
Speaker 1: so we can have this conversation. But it creates a
42:18
Speaker 1: dissonance with space to some degree if we don't think
42:21
Speaker 1: about it. And then time obviously, where everything can be
42:25
Speaker 1: much more immediate. This move toward increased efficiency is always
42:30
Speaker 1: framed as a good thing, and it probably isn't. And
42:34
Speaker 1: so these notions seem to me to be I think
42:41
Speaker 1: in terms of like Pierre Bordieau, he would you know,
42:44
Speaker 1: these are counter fields, right, they're they're they're they're counteracting
42:48
Speaker 1: the formation of an existing world that we live in,
42:52
Speaker 1: and they're pointing us to counter practices that we would
42:56
Speaker 1: do within the kingdom. And now we're able to reform
43:01
Speaker 1: ourselves into kingdom people who are aware of these other
43:06
Speaker 1: pressures that are pushing in on us, and we're resisting
43:08
Speaker 1: those in order to be formed and shaped according to
43:11
Speaker 1: the pattern of God's sacred social order. The trying God's
43:14
Speaker 1: sacred social order. That's sort of the narrative I have
43:17
Speaker 1: in my head for how this could be potentially used.
43:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, the way that we relate to space and time crazy,
43:28
Speaker 2: it's yeah, So it's we're now living in the secular order, right,
43:33
Speaker 2: So space and time are kind of disenchanted for us, right,
43:36
Speaker 2: So yeah, I talk, we don't need to get into it,
43:39
Speaker 2: or we can if you like. But I talk in
43:41
Speaker 2: the book about the incredibly rich and complex ways that
43:45
Speaker 2: sacred social orders structured time and space in these very civilizations.
43:49
Speaker 2: Quite different across the different examples, yea, but all of
43:53
Speaker 2: them had the sense that, like, this isn't an empty
43:57
Speaker 2: or meaningless expanse of space or expanse of time. There's
44:02
Speaker 2: purpose and order and meaning that is built into it.
44:06
Speaker 2: And as humans we have an important place in that.
44:09
Speaker 2: But we're not the masters of it. But in a
44:13
Speaker 2: secular order. And of course this is partly enabled by
44:17
Speaker 2: our technology, but then also reflected in our technology and
44:21
Speaker 2: the way we use and think about our technology. We
44:24
Speaker 2: are the masters. We think of ourselves as the masters.
44:29
Speaker 2: Time is whatever we want it to be, right, It's
44:34
Speaker 2: just this empty expanse moving forward infinitely, of one day
44:41
Speaker 2: following another, and we impose on it whatever shape we want.
44:44
Speaker 2: We try to optimize it. We try to control it,
44:48
Speaker 2: we try to be efficient with it, we try to
44:50
Speaker 2: manage it. But all of that implies there's this kind
44:53
Speaker 2: of instrumental control. It's there to be used and dominated
44:56
Speaker 2: by us, right, And same thing with space, right, space,
45:00
Speaker 2: sugg just this. It's a container. It's an empty container
45:03
Speaker 2: for us to do what we want as human beings.
45:05
Speaker 2: And I think this is related to some of our
45:07
Speaker 2: environmental and ecological problems as well. We look at the
45:13
Speaker 2: soil as this kind of inert thing that we just
45:16
Speaker 2: use for our purposes instead of a thing that has
45:20
Speaker 2: life and integrity of its own that has to be
45:22
Speaker 2: respected and lived with it.
45:24
Speaker 1: Right.
45:24
Speaker 2: And so there's a connection here, I think, to some
45:28
Speaker 2: of our misuse of the earth. But again, it's about control.
45:34
Speaker 2: It's about using these things as masters rather than as
45:41
Speaker 2: stewards and caretakers of them, and a refusal to acknowledge
45:47
Speaker 2: our limits as human beings that were just one part
45:50
Speaker 2: of a larger cosmos that we didn't create. It's a
45:54
Speaker 2: gift to us, a gift that we receive with gratitude,
45:57
Speaker 2: but then also need to steward and cultivate. And that
45:59
Speaker 2: applies to time and space.
46:01
Speaker 1: You look at the.
46:01
Speaker 2: Sabbath laws and the land laws in the Law of Moses,
46:08
Speaker 2: and there's this fascinating parallelism.
46:11
Speaker 1: Right.
46:12
Speaker 2: So you have the Sabbath in time every seventh day,
46:17
Speaker 2: every seventh year, every fiftieth year after the forty ninth year,
46:22
Speaker 2: the cycle of seven sevens right, Right, there's time that
46:27
Speaker 2: is set apart where we are not the masters, we're
46:30
Speaker 2: not doing anything productive, we're not exerting control. And that
46:34
Speaker 2: applies to the land too. The land gets at sabbath rests,
46:37
Speaker 2: or is supposed to. If it doesn't, then you get
46:39
Speaker 2: sent into exile and it gets the Sabbath rest anyway,
46:43
Speaker 2: but you don't harness to the edges of your field. Right.
46:47
Speaker 2: So you know, there's this, i think recognition, even outside
46:52
Speaker 2: of explicitly Christian circles, that this mentality of mastery and control,
47:00
Speaker 2: which is tied up with the scientific revolution and the
47:02
Speaker 2: industrial revolution in Western culture and has immediately given us
47:05
Speaker 2: a lot of really good things. It's good that we've
47:09
Speaker 2: eradicated smallpox, right, So it's not all bad, but it
47:13
Speaker 2: has its dark side. Hard mood Rosa, who's a German
47:18
Speaker 2: sociologists social critic. You know, he's written this book. He's
47:23
Speaker 2: written a few books about various things, but one called
47:27
Speaker 2: The Uncontrollability of the World, and he points out there's
47:30
Speaker 2: this paradox that by thinking that we can control everything
47:33
Speaker 2: that it's sort of laid at our feet for us
47:35
Speaker 2: to master, paradoxically, we actually cut ourselves off from meaning
47:41
Speaker 2: and from the most meaningful experiences in life, which come
47:44
Speaker 2: out of things that are uncontrollable.
47:46
Speaker 1: Yeah.
47:47
Speaker 2: So, yeah, so there's there's there's something to that. And
47:50
Speaker 2: so I think, then, as Christians living in a very
47:52
Speaker 2: secular world where we've come to see time and space
47:57
Speaker 2: as empty, disenchanted things that are just there for us
48:00
Speaker 2: to control and master and manage and optimize, how do
48:04
Speaker 2: we break out of that? And how do we do
48:10
Speaker 2: that in a way that recognizes the lordship of Christ,
48:15
Speaker 2: that recognizes that it is God who is the master
48:17
Speaker 2: of time and space, not us. He's created it for
48:19
Speaker 2: us to live in, but we're not the masters of it.
48:21
Speaker 2: We're his stewards. But also doesn't then impose on people
48:29
Speaker 2: a lot of kind of man made rules and regulations.
48:33
Speaker 2: And this is of course the danger of you can't
48:36
Speaker 2: just go back to medieval Catholicism. The reformers were right
48:40
Speaker 2: in kind of challenging and simplifying a lot of the
48:44
Speaker 2: things that had crept in around sacred conceptions of space, pilgrimages, relics, shrines, altars,
48:54
Speaker 2: and things that had crept in around sacred conceptions of time,
48:58
Speaker 2: Saints days, feast days, obligatory fast and so on. I
49:02
Speaker 2: didn't go back to having space for those kinds of
49:05
Speaker 2: things without them making them a law into themselves. And
49:10
Speaker 2: one place to begin maybe is the sabbath a practice
49:15
Speaker 2: of Sabbath or recovery of the Sabbath. And here, of
49:18
Speaker 2: course I'm speaking as a Protestant, but in our pistant
49:21
Speaker 2: churches where in the last few generations we've largely i
49:25
Speaker 2: think lost sight of the Sabbath as a sanctuary in time,
49:30
Speaker 2: as one author has called it.
49:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that I did my dissertation on Sabbath,
49:36
Speaker 1: so I'm always awesome. Yeah, Sabbath is awesome. I think
49:43
Speaker 1: as I've thought through this, the other thing I think
49:45
Speaker 1: is we just have to get a sense of what
49:47
Speaker 1: the sacred order actually is that we're living in, not
49:52
Speaker 1: the ideal one, but just this conversation we've even had
49:56
Speaker 1: today of what might those sacred order pieces be, and
50:00
Speaker 1: how is it that we are adopting them in ways
50:04
Speaker 1: that we don't really recognize? You know, I think that
50:08
Speaker 1: especially early on when I was first starting to talk
50:11
Speaker 1: about technology or even politics, people took it as you know,
50:14
Speaker 1: your anti politics or anti tech, and I had to
50:18
Speaker 1: really learn to nuance it because I'm not saying we
50:20
Speaker 1: should get rid of all technology, but we have to
50:24
Speaker 1: recognize that these things do come with revenge effects, right.
50:27
Speaker 1: They are forming and shaping us in very particular ways,
50:31
Speaker 1: and so as we adopt them, we need to understand
50:35
Speaker 1: what ideology we need to be combating as we do that,
50:40
Speaker 1: and how is it that these things are are pushing
50:43
Speaker 1: us toward a notion of the sacred that we don't
50:45
Speaker 1: want to adopt. And so we can use them more
50:48
Speaker 1: as tools, But we have to be pretty vigilant to
50:53
Speaker 1: do that. And so I'll leave it there at asheesh,
50:58
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have some follow up questions. I let
51:00
Speaker 1: you go ahead, you know I do.
51:04
Speaker 3: There's a lot of voices swrolling in my head, so
51:06
Speaker 3: I'll see if I can bring them together into something succinct.
51:11
Speaker 3: As you were talking. As you both were talking, the
51:14
Speaker 3: language of space kept coming up and Kevin, you described
51:17
Speaker 3: space in terms of container. I often think of it
51:20
Speaker 3: as it's something mouldible, right, It's something that is expansive,
51:26
Speaker 3: no boundaries. We think of outer space. But it's a
51:29
Speaker 3: thing that we enter into. We shape it. And kadakisas
51:33
Speaker 3: precisely at this point can also show the possibility of malformation.
51:40
Speaker 3: So if we're catechized into space, moldible space that we
51:45
Speaker 3: enter into, the domineering sort of thing flows out of that.
51:49
Speaker 3: We control this. I like to call it the McDonald's effect. Here, there,
51:52
Speaker 3: and everywhere. It looks the same because we've shaped it
51:55
Speaker 3: according to our preferences. You know, you're driving through I
52:01
Speaker 3: once took a road trip to BC and you pass
52:06
Speaker 3: through all these areas that are very foreign to a
52:08
Speaker 3: Chicago area kid, Right, and you have a choice to
52:13
Speaker 3: make McDonald's.
52:15
Speaker 1: I don't.
52:15
Speaker 3: I'm not interested, but I know what it is. Sally's
52:19
Speaker 3: Beisenberger Shop could be really good, it could be a
52:24
Speaker 3: painful experience, right. And McDonald's is hedging its bet that
52:30
Speaker 3: you're going to go with the predictable, right, and that
52:33
Speaker 3: sort of facilitates it's in a cultural way. A catechisis
52:37
Speaker 3: of how we begin to think about space rather than place,
52:41
Speaker 3: a place where I received myself from. So the voices
52:45
Speaker 3: I have swirling in my head, some of them your
52:47
Speaker 3: own work, Kevin. I'm also thinking of Willie James Jennings
52:51
Speaker 3: and his work as he talks about our Christian theologies
52:57
Speaker 3: of creation have lost a sense of place and replaced
53:00
Speaker 3: it with a sense of space, and as a result,
53:02
Speaker 3: we don't see ourselves as shaped, we don't see ourselves
53:06
Speaker 3: as belonging to places of sticking your hands in the dirt.
53:09
Speaker 3: But I also think of the work of Norman Wurzba,
53:11
Speaker 3: who we just talked to, So be on the lookout
53:16
Speaker 3: for that everyone, But he talks about the same sort
53:20
Speaker 3: of thing in terms of we look at the Genesis
53:23
Speaker 3: account of humanity being given creation in some sense as dominion,
53:29
Speaker 3: and we take dominion to be domineering, We take mastery
53:33
Speaker 3: to be control instead of taking it more artistically right,
53:38
Speaker 3: where the work of the gardener mastering the garden is
53:41
Speaker 3: never ever to control it. And I wonder if that
53:45
Speaker 3: katechisis is so deeply rooted. You see those effects already
53:50
Speaker 3: there in medieval Christianity. You see it as they encounter
53:53
Speaker 3: first nations, peoples and their initial impulse isn't to see
53:57
Speaker 3: them as doing something beautiful of the land, the land
54:00
Speaker 3: that they coveted and didn't recognize that what made it
54:04
Speaker 3: so covetable was the deep, the deep natured hands in
54:10
Speaker 3: the soil approach to the land of seeing themselves as
54:13
Speaker 3: belonging to it and understanding it and being able to
54:16
Speaker 3: work from within that place. Now, on this side of
54:20
Speaker 3: the project, the catechisas of space seems like it continues
54:25
Speaker 3: to hinder us, right, so as Christians, it becomes something
54:28
Speaker 3: to fight. We don't see and I'm not saying all
54:34
Speaker 3: things are good, but we don't see the possibilities in
54:36
Speaker 3: all things right. We don't see the chance to be
54:38
Speaker 3: able to say, okay, this.
54:39
Speaker 2: Is where I am.
54:40
Speaker 3: I don't have the ability to say, let's rewind five
54:43
Speaker 3: hundred years and reset things. The earth is in the
54:46
Speaker 3: shape that it is. Now, what what can we use?
54:49
Speaker 3: Can we take these things that have been made for
54:51
Speaker 3: mastery and reimagine them? And I wonder if that's the
54:56
Speaker 3: work of the catechisus that we have to get to
54:59
Speaker 3: have that ground level, hands in the dirt place rather
55:03
Speaker 3: than space approach. Do you have do you have thoughts
55:06
Speaker 3: on that well.
55:08
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm just eating this up, and I think
55:15
Speaker 2: part of the solution here, and this is actually something
55:20
Speaker 2: that's been championed by King Charles as well. I didn't
55:25
Speaker 2: intend to spe to be a monarchist podcast, but I
55:31
Speaker 2: think he's very right. Like I think he's recognized if
55:34
Speaker 2: you look at some of his charitable causes that he
55:36
Speaker 2: supports and some of his writings, he recognizes these these
55:41
Speaker 2: are interconnected problems, right, So, like the ecological crisis, the
55:45
Speaker 2: spiritual crisis, the ugliness of modern architecture, like these are
55:49
Speaker 2: all interconnected problems. And one of the things that we're
55:53
Speaker 2: missing is a recognition of the importance of harmony and
55:57
Speaker 2: the importance of limits. And one of the ways that
56:01
Speaker 2: we can recover that, I think is through you know,
56:07
Speaker 2: the kids these days say we need to touch grass,
56:11
Speaker 2: and I think that's true. You know, it's actually engaging
56:15
Speaker 2: in something like preparing for plants and animals and the
56:24
Speaker 2: practice of gardening, which, especially in urban environments, many of
56:29
Speaker 2: us have become somewhat removed from. Man. It's a reminder
56:33
Speaker 2: you're not in control. You know, you're there to tend,
56:38
Speaker 2: you're there to try to create conditions that are favorable
56:41
Speaker 2: for certain things, but you are not a control and
56:43
Speaker 2: you have to work with the life that is there
56:49
Speaker 2: and screwed it. That's our first vocation, right. We are created,
56:53
Speaker 2: our first parents. What is the work that God gives them.
56:58
Speaker 2: He places them in the garden to tend to it,
57:01
Speaker 2: to care for it, to keep it. And that does
57:04
Speaker 2: involve dominion, but it's dominion in the sense of you
57:08
Speaker 2: know this great old word husbandry. It's an intimate, caring
57:15
Speaker 2: kind of relationship with that kind of dominion. It's taking
57:21
Speaker 2: care of in order to make fruitful. And I think,
57:26
Speaker 2: you know, literal gardening is a very good practice for
57:32
Speaker 2: many reasons. I think that's that's one of them. Yeah,
57:36
Speaker 2: so I'm eating up with what you're saying, Ashish. I
57:42
Speaker 2: don't know that I have much more to add to that,
57:43
Speaker 2: but yeah, other than.
57:46
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of fascinating and we're running out
57:49
Speaker 1: of time here, so we'll probably close it out. But
57:50
Speaker 1: I mean, there was it was probably five years ago now,
57:53
Speaker 1: there was a book written called Shop Classes Soul Craft.
57:56
Speaker 1: I don't know that you either of you had an
57:57
Speaker 1: opportunity to read that. As a kid. I was not
58:01
Speaker 1: a very handy person. I've never been a real outdoorsy
58:04
Speaker 1: kind of guy, but in high school I worked on
58:06
Speaker 1: a farm, and those are some of my fondest memories
58:09
Speaker 1: being outside. And even if it was freezing cold and
58:12
Speaker 1: you're out doing stuff in the snow, or you're trying
58:14
Speaker 1: to you know, unthaw the water so the pigs can
58:17
Speaker 1: drink or whatever, you know, I think there is something
58:22
Speaker 1: grounding about that. And having been married into a family
58:29
Speaker 1: who farms there, I've sort of adopted or been adopted into.
58:37
Speaker 1: I suppose a deeper sense of land that looks a
58:39
Speaker 1: little probably less violent than like Yellowstone if you've ever
58:43
Speaker 1: seen that show, but is no less tenacious about keeping it.
58:50
Speaker 1: You know, there's a sense in which the ground that
58:53
Speaker 1: you know, my wife's grandpa passed down to her dad,
58:56
Speaker 1: and it will eventually be passed down to our kids.
58:59
Speaker 1: It's just never going to be sold, and we don't
59:03
Speaker 1: view it as sacred. But the air is thinner there,
59:06
Speaker 1: you know, and so it's got an import that I
59:10
Speaker 1: think is really crucial. So I appreciate the conversation. I
59:15
Speaker 1: think that these categories that we've talked about today, and
59:18
Speaker 1: there's so much more we could explore, really are crucial
59:21
Speaker 1: for Christians today to understand the begin thinking through And
59:25
Speaker 1: it just strikes me that we've got so many of
59:27
Speaker 1: these pieces that are sort of floating around in the ether,
59:29
Speaker 1: shaping and changing the way we think about the world
59:32
Speaker 1: around us, that we've got to get back on track here.
59:35
Speaker 1: So Kevin very much appreciated your work. Like this is
59:39
Speaker 1: the second time we've had you on to talk about it.
59:41
Speaker 1: I think there's so much more we could talk about
59:44
Speaker 1: and just really appreciate you coming back on.
59:47
Speaker 2: Well, that's a delight, James. You know, anytime you're an
59:50
Speaker 2: author of a book, to have people engage with that
59:53
Speaker 2: and get some value out of it as really rewarding.
59:56
Speaker 2: And I've loved these questions in these conversations. So thank
59:59
Speaker 2: you very much.
1:00:00
Speaker 1: Thank you. All right, everybody, Well, well, oh go.
1:00:03
Speaker 3: Ahead, oshizh no, I was saying thank you as well.
1:00:06
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's it. Very cool. Well, we'll catch everybody
1:00:10
Speaker 1: on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Take care. I
1:00:12
Speaker 1: just want to take a second to thank the team
1:00:14
Speaker 1: at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the
1:00:16
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1:00:19
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1:00:23
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